Free Fragile by Lisa Unger

to grudging peace before bed. She didn’t want another night like that.
    He put a hand on her arm. “Don’t be mad,” he said. “I know you care about your patients. I just need you to protect yourself, too.”
    Her annoyance dissolved instantly. “I know,” she said. “You’re right.”
    She knew where the professional line was in terms of behavior, of course. But she didn’t seem to have a stopgap internally, didn’t always know when or how to stop caring on a personal level. It left her feeling drained sometimes, though she was better at protecting herself than she had been when she was younger.
    “What about you?” she asked. She shifted in her seat, thinking the cushions were getting stiff and needed replacing. “Are you doing okay?”
    There were leaves floating in the pool. They’d need to have someone out to clean and winterize, cover it for the season. Every autumn, she thought about her private promise to swim laps every day in the summer, enjoy the pool more on the weekends. And at the end of every season, she looked back with regret, thinking she could count on the fingers of one hand the times she’d done either.
    “I’m just tired,” he said. “Just really tired.”
    In the dim light, she watched him. He had his head back on the chair, looking up at the stars. She could already tell by the set of his jaw, the way his arms were folded across his body, that he wouldn’t say more. She drained her glass and thought about another, then noticed that the cut on her finger had started to bleed again.
    She got up to bandage it, and when she returned, Jones had already gone inside. She found him lying on the couch, the remote in his hand.
    “Want to watch anything?” he asked. But she knew he’d just flip through the channels until he found something that interested him.
    “No,” she said. “Maybe I’ll just catch up on some paperwork.”
    But he was already tuned out, just gave her a little nod. She stood in the doorway a minute, watched him settle in. She went upstairs and listenedat Ricky’s door, heard him singing along to something on his headphones. She worried that he hadn’t eaten but figured he’d know there was pizza downstairs when he got hungry. Then she drifted back to her office, unlocking that door, moving through quietly, and closing it behind her.
    Their house was always dark, not like at Leila and Mark’s, where every light was always shining and there was a television going in one room, a radio playing in another. Everyone was always talking, yelling from room to room, his cousins were in and out, chatting on the phone, speaking in loud voices, laughing, arguing, goofing around.
    Boys, please , Leila’s eternal plea. The noise . But she never really sounded angry, not in the way he was used to. Even when she was scolding, she always seemed on the verge of laughing.
    The refrigerator was always full to bursting; there was always something simmering on the stove. There was no room for dark or quiet or cold in that house.
    “It’s a three-ring circus over there,” his father complained. “How did you stand it?”
    “The circus is fun , Dad. People laugh and have a good time.” He’d tried that good-natured joking around that was acceptable at his aunt’s house. But it didn’t work with his dad.
    “The circus is for idiots.” His father’s words had the sting of a hard slap. Then, as if the slag weren’t already implied, “You must have felt right at home.”
    Marshall had felt right at home. He really had. But when the judge had asked him where he wanted to live, he’d said, “I want to be with my dad.” And he had wanted that.
    “Why, Son?” the judge had asked with something like disbelief. He remembered that office, overwarm and dusty. The judge sat behind a giant wood desk that Marshall would swear was designed to make people on the other side feel small. The shelves were lined with books, matching leather-bound volumes. He remembered that a few years